[linux-audio-user] Rosegarden vs. Note Edit

[Chris Cannam]

On Friday 13 Jun 2003 9:40 pm, Chris Cannam wrote:
> I wouldn't mind seeing a reply from
> one of the NoteEdit developers, as I've probably inadvertantly
> slandered them somewhere.

Actually, reading it through again, I realise the opposite may be 
true: I probably haven't done much of a job of explaining why anyone 
would prefer to use Rosegarden.  What a great salesman I am.  Not 
that it makes any difference, since they're both free.

The principle about Rosegarden is that all of the non-notation stuff 
is actually useful when working on notation as well, particularly if 
you're doing composition rather than just transcribing scores.  For 
example, it does a good job of helping prepare reasonable MIDI 
performances: it can estimate things like velocities from the score, 
and can remember the performed times and durations of notes even 
while tidying them up for score purposes.  It includes a quantizer 
dedicated to producing readable score, that admittedly still needs 
work but still does pretty much as good a job from performance 
timings as (say) Sibelius does (although Rosegarden really needs 
tempo-tracking as well -- it's on my to-do list).  You can use it 
(with a soft synth or external synth and mixer) to render your 
compositions down to audio tracks.  It has configurable program/bank 
patch maps for MIDI devices, including a number of popular devices as 
standard.  Flashy stuff like antialiasing for notes isn't just for 
show, it makes it much easier to see and follow scores in smaller 
sizes; and having a nice friendly GUI is also a genuinely useful 
thing. 

There are also several areas where it has interesting potential rather 
than immediate utility, but they maybe aren't of much interest here.

And there are some real downsides (here I go again with my 
non-salesman stuff).  It sometimes behaves inconsistently or 
unexpectedly for reasons connected to the fact that it's manipulating 
sequenceable data behind the scenes -- i.e. things like tuplets and 
grace notes are stored in playable form rather than displayable form, 
and it takes some testing to get all the potential conversion cases 
working correctly.  Many of the natty features described above are 
incomplete: for example the notation quantizer can guess slurs, 
tenuto etc but it tends to do so in rather inappropriate places at 
the moment.  The lyric editor is weaker than NoteEdit's (forgot to 
mention that last time).  And of course perhaps what you want is an 
editor you can enter whatever you like into, and that will do 
whatever you tell it with it, instead of an editor that thinks it 
knows what you're doing.

And the Rosegarden developers talk too damn much.


Chris